92 | Q3 2026 Freight Market Forecast

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Ongoing skirmish in Iran which results in the Strait of Hormuz being closed and oil prices skyrocket. [00:00:06] Speaker B: We've said multiple times on this podcast that the snapback was going to be aggressive. [00:00:10] Speaker C: And then you have the safe driver week, brake safety week, all those things that continue to disrupt capacity. [00:00:15] Speaker B: And the thing is that there are quite a few tailwinds that have been put in place that should sort of fire up a demand surge. [00:00:20] Speaker A: Well, we follow all the rules, so we should be charging more. [00:00:23] Speaker B: Your problem is that your shipper closes at 2 and your receiver doesn't open [00:00:26] Speaker D: until 9pm Calling all CPG shippers, truckers and logistics pros, welcome to the Truck Yeah. Podcast, your ultimate cheat code for smarter shipping, smoother logistics, and dominating the shelf where it matters most. Buckle up. It's time to learn, laugh and get your freight on. [00:00:47] Speaker A: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another edition, another episode of the Zipline Logistics Podcast. My name is Jesse Jewitt. Join with me as always today, Teddy Lee Knox. Hello, Teddy. [00:00:59] Speaker C: Hello. How are you? [00:01:00] Speaker A: Wonderful. We got a recurring guest, our third co host, co founder Andrew Lynch. Hello, Andrew. [00:01:09] Speaker B: Hey, thanks for letting me come back, even though I'm always wrong. [00:01:13] Speaker A: Hey, that's all right. We're talking Q3. It sounds like you're having. [00:01:17] Speaker C: You may not have been wrong. [00:01:19] Speaker A: Getting a little bit burned long enough. [00:01:20] Speaker B: Timeline. [00:01:21] Speaker C: Maybe you were just a couple years from now. [00:01:24] Speaker B: I'm usually wrong early. [00:01:25] Speaker A: We got a lot. We got a lot of things right. We got a lot of things wrong. But that's okay because we're talking Q3, 2026, freight market perspective. So we're going to talk about things, what's happening now, what we saw in Q2 and what's coming up in quarter three, 2026. We ready? [00:01:44] Speaker C: We're ready. But before we jump into it, I just want to mention that one of the things we always talk about is controlling the controllables, and that is all you can do in logistics and regardless of the market. So even though predictions may have been not accurate, that still is. So no matter what, if you can control the controllables, have a plan, have a backup plan, and have the right partnerships in place, everything will go the way it's supposed to. [00:02:09] Speaker B: Yeah. Which we did call that out in Q2. [00:02:11] Speaker A: Yeah, we did. [00:02:12] Speaker B: Yeah. I think I was mostly referring to, like, I'm going to just chalk up like the last, you know, kind of since COVID that we're still in a world where those of us who've been in this industry for over 20 years are seeing Things that we've never seen before. And in this case it's a supply driven market flip that is like just dramatically more impactful than any other supply driven. [00:02:40] Speaker A: Sure. [00:02:41] Speaker B: Market change that we've ever seen. It's just, it's not even close. These are normally the very shallow dips in the cycles. And this one, obviously it created a massive dip on the back of a huge, huge demand surge. And then it, and now it's, you know, it's sort of snapback is creating a wild, a wild climb. So the COVID ride continues. [00:03:06] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Just kind of reset or level set on what's the last nine months of has has happened here. All right. In the world of freight. So you know, end of October, the fmcsa, the current administration really targeting non domicile CDL drivers. Certainly non domiciles or I guess CDL schools as well. Some bad actors. Right. You think back to your Covid comment. The demand was high, the entry was low. Right. A lot of people think, hey, this is a great opportunity. I can buy a truck for relatively cheap, I can get a driver's license for relatively cheap and I can start making some serious money as a truck driver. Five years later, you know, an administration comes in and says we gotta get these folks off the road. So that's kind of the first domino that falls. Next up we have Black Friday, you know, anticipating low numbers and turns out, hey, the economy and the, and the consumer is still strong here in America. So we're driving demand right. By buying goods for the holiday season. So we're seeing that kind of higher than anticipated, if I'm not mistaken. Then we roll into, you know, January 2026. That's a typically slower time of year. The demand is still high as capacity continues to exit the market. Then we have two weather events in January. So that causes some more disruption. We're trying to read the tea leaves. I think this is when we had our Q2 update discussion. So trying to figure out if it's weather driven or if it's demand driven, supply driven, etc. And all these things are still happening. Then mid February we have the tariff ruling. So another, you know, change that's going to cause imports. We're starting to see that now. They're starting to fluctuate in. Fluctuate in. They're starting to roll in. Right. Tariffs have been removed. The barrier of entry of importing is, is, is lower. So we're starting to see those show up at the ports. Especially now. [00:05:08] Speaker C: I feel like fluctuate was a Good word for that. I feel like that is great. Exactly. What's happening. [00:05:12] Speaker A: Nailing it. Give me the button. [00:05:15] Speaker D: No. [00:05:17] Speaker A: So then end of February, you know, as things are starting to quote, unquote, you know, level out, we enter into this ongoing skirmish and in, in Iran, which results in the Strait of Hormuz being closed and oil prices skyrocket. So at a time when the demand is high and capacity is being removed off the road, now we have a. Another element in there, which is diesel essentially doubling. It's not quite doubling, but it's pretty darn close. I mean, we were seeing reports in April and May of, you know, even in California, like $8 a gallon for, for diesel, which is just insane. And that's kind of continued. So all of that has contributed to. I think where we're at now today is, you know, the oil is starting to come down, Tom, here at the. In the back half of Q2. So we're starting to see some relief on the diesel prices. But what hasn't changed is the capacity continues to be removed off of the road and the demand is still relatively high. A lot of that is being driven by data centers and construction. The consumer is. I mean, I don't know, the prices are still high and I think people are still buying stuff. Maybe they're putting on credit card. That's a. Probably a different podcast. But what's happening is there's not that even though the prices are high, there's not a easy entry point or there's not a designed entry point yet from the trucking perspective. So we don't have, you know, thousands of folks coming here from other places to get a shot at a new life and a new opportunity for cheap. Right. So there's no one entering in as truck drivers. And then the cost to actually buy a truck is, is up. So what the carriers are doing, normally you would say, all right, prices have doubled. Let's go get some trucks. Let's go get some drivers and start really raking some bank. Well, unfortunately, since mid-2022, up until that time period, I gave back like In November of 2025, rates were compressed. So carriers, motor carriers, trucking companies were operating at either really close to break even thin margins, maybe even at a little loss. So right now, instead of going out and trying to capitalize on this significant demand, they're just trying to like, fill everything up. Let's get back to profitability. Let's be more strategic about this. Let's just hold the line and, and enjoy the profits while we can. Because it doesn't it right now and we're going to talk about this. It doesn't look like it's going away. No, but man, they've been just so kicked in the teeth for the last three years that they, they're trying to be, you know, the COVID was the wild, wild West. This is like, I don't know, the industrial revolution. That doesn't make any sense. But I think, you know what, it's going to be longer. [00:08:17] Speaker B: Yeah, it is. I, I1 what I'll say that we, that we did not get wrong again or maybe we were wrong early. But one thing that we've been, you know, I think pretty clear on is that, you know, when, when it was time for these guys to start actually making hay that they were not going to have any other option. Right. Like when, you know, when you're running a, a business that's running it that runs as thin even in healthy markets as a trucking company does or a freight brokerage, you know, you've got a responsibility to your people or to your family or to whomever it is that you serve in this life to, to capitalize and with, with, with the, how prolonged this downturn was. You know, I know that we said multiple times on this podcast that this, the snapback was going to be aggressive and relatively ruthless like, you know, and, and, and it should be. I mean that's, that is exactly how this should go. If, if, you know, if this is how this industry is going to, to comport itself, then you should expect its operators to behave in exactly that way. And as we get more firm on how the supply side of this equation is going to play out, meaning all of the things that you just said, also the fact that there's not really terra firma from a regulatory perspective, no one really knows what to expect over the next few years, which means that there's not a lot of security in making big investments in growing your fleet or growing your driver population to the fact that capital is expensive and yeah, insurance is expensive and right. Everything is, is, you know, really volatile. So, you know, I don't think we're going to see a massive supply expansion. But what we still haven't seen and why this snapback has, has shocked a lot of us in its, in its sort of, you know, just kind of the steepness of the curve is that we still haven't seen a big demand shift. You know, there isn't, there isn't a massive demand surge happening. And the thing is that there are quite a few Tailwinds that have been put in place that should, that should sort of fire up a demand surge. [00:10:26] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:10:27] Speaker B: You know, to your point, on, on sort of the tariff roller coaster and, but also just all of the work that has to be done on housing, which is the most impactful sector on freight that has been stagnated for the last several years and, you know, is a top priority for every, you know, this administration and the next to get, you know, sort of sorted out. So, you know, I think there's actually a really big risk that we see, certainly not in the next two quarters just because there's nothing, you know, that urgent right now, but we start to see a really, really, really steep demand curve over the next, you know, kind of year and a half, which could make things really dramatic. [00:11:06] Speaker A: Let's bookmark this so we can listen to it in, in our. For pending our Q4 update. It's definitely not two quarters. [00:11:14] Speaker B: Oh, God, we're gonna edit the word certainty out of that sentence. [00:11:17] Speaker A: That was a, that's, that's a great call because I forgot one piece and it's on our topic. The Supreme Court ruling around liability for three PLs. Right. So that's another. Similar to fuel. That's another cost impact that's kind of outside of the supply and demand, I don't know, window realm, if you will, that's just adding more fuel to this fire. Is that now three PLs typically, and Andrew can speak on this better than I can, but typically there was some garden guardian, guardianship. I don't know what's the word? I'm like safety from 3PL's perspective, that's the wrong word, but I think you understand protection. And now a shipper, a, you know, someone who's involved in an accident can, can sue the, the three PL for, for liability on that, not just a carrier. So that's going to increase insurance costs. It's, you know, there's all sorts of additional factors at play that we're still trying to figure out, quite frankly. Yeah, but as you can imagine, if your insurance cost goes up, then your cost per mile goes up, then your [00:12:32] Speaker B: cost per load goes up. [00:12:32] Speaker A: Like all of it plays into those factors. So that's just being passed on to the shipper. [00:12:38] Speaker B: Yeah, I, I mean, rightfully so, for sure. And a lot of interesting, you know, questions come come to mind around sort of how the industry reshapes following that ruling. But, you know, I know that on the, on the last podcast we, we touched a little bit on, on like the days of the csa Scores. And what I think is, is going to be a critical sort of point of differentiation over the next few years is that, you know, look, you, you can't have a, a, a detailed strict carrier procurement program focused on safety that you don't follow or you are just like begging to be sued. Right. So like that was always, you know, all of our attorneys during all of that CSA stuff, all the counsel we got was like, look, whatever your, your program is, you can't overstate it to the market, what it is. And also whatever it is, you have to follow it. And so there's opportunity there, right, to like for us, right. Where we have always differentiated on carrier selection, to go out to the market and talk about it and say, hey look, this business actually was built on moving high touch, high vis, high value stuff. That's what we do and it's what we've always done. And so our carrier selection process has always looked like this. So we've always followed it. The reason that we've always been, even when we were, I mean that, that CS those CSA years, we were like a 12 person business. You're brand new. [00:14:00] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:14:01] Speaker B: Both of you were brand spanking new at Zipline. [00:14:03] Speaker A: And [00:14:06] Speaker B: the reason we became so dogged about documenting our, our safety guidelines and then, you know, really making sure that our guidelines were followable and repeatable and, and essentially became, you know, kind of an automated. Part of the progress was that our attorneys were, that was like their only emphasis was like just whatever it is that you're saying you're doing, you better be doing it. And if you're not going to do it, don't go sell that service. You're worse off. And so we're really built from a procurement perspective for sort of this time. But I think it'll be interesting to see how less niche players have to talk about this. Like, I want to hear how some of like the huge, you know, companies that sort of serve everyone. Yeah. How are they going to talk about their compliance programs? Right. I mean there's a, there's a new point. There's going to be a very new level of cost behind sort of, you know, having a safety program in the name of marketing instead of in the name of safety and quality. [00:15:06] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a challenge. I mean, certainly like we said, that ruling is putting a lot of pressure on that, working with the, the best of the best. And those best of the best carriers know that. I mean, we've already seen it, right. They're, they're capitalizing on the demand now. They're capitalizing on. [00:15:26] Speaker B: Well, we follow all the rules. [00:15:27] Speaker A: So we should be charging more. [00:15:29] Speaker B: Absolutely. [00:15:30] Speaker A: Are you ready to do that? [00:15:32] Speaker B: And they should. [00:15:33] Speaker A: Right. 100%. [00:15:34] Speaker B: It's an interesting position to, to be in. It's an I, I, I need to understand more sort of how the, you know, the mindset works of like the federal establishment to say, hey, we're actually not going to give you really any good safety data. We're just, we can't, we can't, we, we can't inspect all these carriers. There's far too many of them. Yeah, we have no way to do this. However, you are very much responsible for knowing that. You know, like. Right. The safety and, and again, like that's, that was something that was ingrained here. But we have an industry that's, you know, you know, nearly a trillion dollars with hundreds of thousands of operators in it. And I'd like to understand how those folks are going to process, you know, this, this interesting demand. [00:16:21] Speaker A: Yeah, it's, it, There was a discussion at a symposium, a carrier meeting, I forget which one, but I know someone from the fmc, FMCSA came in and, and talked and yeah, the challenge, I think it's like 94% don't have a safety rating. [00:16:42] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:16:42] Speaker A: Which is, maybe that's not, maybe that's motor carriers numbers or whatever. But, and then that was part of the ruling, like if they have to be satisfactory and if they don't. So it's like, okay, well then that's 6%. Like what? [00:16:55] Speaker B: Shut it, Shut the entire economy down. [00:16:57] Speaker C: What's happening? [00:16:58] Speaker A: Yeah, so yeah, that's probably a different podcast that we could dive in. Let's talk about some other things that are happening in Q3. I'm just going to list these off and we can talk about them as you as you see fit. But we're going to move relatively quickly here. Hurricane season's coming up here. That starts in, in early July. [00:17:16] Speaker C: I thought it started in June. [00:17:18] Speaker A: Well, I haven't heard anything. [00:17:20] Speaker B: It's ramping up. [00:17:21] Speaker A: Yeah, it's ramping up. We're getting ready. Summertime in the Caribbean, produce season. That's certainly happening now. We expect that to continue through, through July. That's the, you know, the early part of Q3. But then, you know, we'll see it in other the world. We've got beverage season happening. Hot beverages, cold beverages, most likely cold. Man, oh man. Side note, I went, we're recording this right around the July 4th holiday. It is unbelievable. At the grocery stores. I mean I saw like it was like pallets and pallets of just beverages, just non alcoholic and alcoholic, just ready to go. Like, here's your, here's everything you could possibly need for your party or your, you know, your take on the heat wave that we're experiencing some blitzweek. So we got operations Safe Driver Week, that's happened in July. We've got Brake Safety week in August. So again, these are not supply and demand factors. These are just other things that pop up that can affect capacity or the market in very, very unique ways. Right. So obviously if there's hurricanes happening in the southeast, then people are going to avoid going there. So now you have to pay them to go somewhere else or you have to pay them extra to go down into those problem areas. Maybe you have to pay them less to get out. So there's all sorts of factors to kind of consider. Any other comments there, Teddy, that you want to throw at some of these? [00:18:47] Speaker C: With everything that we were talking about, I feel like, I keep thinking about the fact that like, you know, supply and demand, everything. But like at what point does it start changing based off of available capacity? Like if capacity continues to exit the marketplace, if we only have 6% of carriers that have a safety rating that we can use, like at what point does it become something where it's like, well, this is a summer beverage, so this only comes out in the summer. Like this is a winter beverage. Like we're only going to do this in the winter because beverages right now, like they're meal replacements, they have protein, they have collagen, they have energy. Like it's sparkling, it's everything all in one. [00:19:26] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:19:26] Speaker C: Which I think also it becomes difficult when you go into like produce season or when you go into the winter because they need to protect from freeze. You don't want them exploding. So all of a sudden something where it's just used to be a simple beverage has to change everything as far as you know, how it's stored to how it's shipped, how it's received and sent to the actual stores. All of that changes seasonally. So something that normally goes dry all of a sudden has to go refrigerated because cars are melting outside right now. So I think all of that is really interesting. And then you have the safe driver week, brake safety week. All those things that continue to disrupt capacity and what's going on. [00:20:07] Speaker A: Take it off the road. [00:20:08] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. So like all of that I think becomes really interesting in that changes the pain points that people are dealing with and that. Understand. Because I, I mean I don't really think the logistics industry is something that people really understand quickly or understand what's going on. There's always so many changes. So if you are a shipper and you're only dealing with the marketing side and the retailers and things like that, every time something like this pops up where it's like safety week is good, why are we upset about this? [00:20:36] Speaker A: Well, I would imagine so. Yeah, that's a really good call out. But like the pain point. Right. So I was trying to think of a way and Andrew could probably talk about this of rate stability. Whew, man, that should be a blog post. But in this market. Right. I think what, what we deal with is that, you know, a rate, whether it's an all in rate or a cost per mile, I mean, I mean it's honestly if it's certainly weekly, daily, maybe hourly. Right. Like when you're talking about a particular order, it can change that quickly. Right. And so the pain point with some of our shippers that we, we talk to, I know we've talked about it before, but like a lane, right. For a carrier, I think the original one metric was like you got to have one of those a day, right. A business day. So 250 a year to like have a lane. Right. So a lot of our customers do not have that. [00:21:35] Speaker B: That. Yeah. [00:21:36] Speaker A: Density, density. Nice. And so we're sourcing now. We have carrier partners, et cetera. But a lot of it's on the spot market. So as the spot rates continue to rise and fuel continues to be volatile, like again, it, it shifts. All of these things shift certainly with the capacity, but as I mentioned before. So that's a pain point that we're having to explain almost daily. Yeah, of like, yeah, I know I told you it was 1250 Monday, but it's Tuesday now it's 1450 or maybe Wednesday it'll be 1150. Like that's exciting. So how do you balance that all out with a, with a customer is, is a challenge. [00:22:19] Speaker B: It's. Yeah, it's, it's, it's like kind of the, the tales. Oldest time in this business too. Right. Because you know, price transparency, like when I started, you know, brokering, you know, in carrier sales at, at, at Robinson, it was like we had an asymmetric advantage which was, you know, data and market information. Right. You could, you could be speaking with a carrier and say, look, there are 700 trucks in this metro area and there's seven loads and I have one of them. This is what you're going to this is what you're going to get. [00:22:46] Speaker A: Yeah, right. [00:22:47] Speaker B: Or the other way around. And, and you know, that was how the industry ran. And as technology obviously in a, in a million positive ways has become ubiquitous, so has price transparency like the, the commodity of the, and, and I don't, I don't like to refer to it as a commodity because it's not, it's kind of, it's a stratified commodity though. Right. In that, you know, at a certain, you know, kind of price band or in a certain lane, you're going to essentially pay, you know, within a, you know, a 3 or 4%, you know, kind of delta of a specific rate. What shippers and customers. And our job as professional, you know, sort of managed transportation providers is to educate our clients that that part of the equation is basically uncontrollable. So we can have our network, our relationships, they have their own businesses to run, they can have established pricing with us. But if your freight does not fit their timeline, which is less flexible, then we have to go to the spot market or we have to go to the next person in line and their cost is going to be a little bit higher. But what you can control back to Teddy's, you know, kind of very consistent point of controlling the controllables is making the, the freight work for the truck. Like, if price is your North Star as a consumer packaged goods manufacturer, then you need to understand that in order to achieve price. Yeah. You've got to find flexibility elsewhere. And we've talked about this like the cost of perfection in your supply chain. We've had this over the years, so many white papers and, and case studies on this where it's like, look, yeah, you can control the price, it means that other parts of your business have got to become flexible. Yep. And if you're a shipper that has, you know, hours from, you know, 9:00am to 2:00pm and your receivers are CNS and UNFI locations that receive from 9:00pm to 3:00am Guess what? Like, you do not have this. And so you either better go start paying your people overtime at the shipping location so that they can ship at hours that make it efficient for carriers or start, you know, figuring out how to justify these costs in your price point. But at the end of the day, the reason that they can be called commodities to some extent is that they are experienced industry wide. So the thing that's important for shippers to understand is that, yeah, look, if you make a, you know, a sparkling protein beverage right now and you're seeing your transportation costs Go up. Your competitor's transportation costs are going up too. Pepsi's transportation costs are going up. Coke's transportation. So don't worry so much about that part of your bottom line. Worry about the return that you're getting. Because the difference between you and your competitor isn't whether or not you paid 4 cents a mile less on that lane, it's whether or not your product was on the shelf when your customer was there to buy it. That's the difference between winning and losing in your space. And like, that's where you should be focusing. [00:25:42] Speaker C: I agree with that. And I think something that is always overlooked, I feel like I see it all the day is all day on all the day. [00:25:49] Speaker D: Sorry. [00:25:49] Speaker C: All the time is cadence tracking and order minimums. There are so many times where I see we are shipping two cases somewhere where it's like, why does this need to be on a pallet? [00:25:59] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:26:00] Speaker C: So I think that all goes back to controlling the controllers, but also having the right partnerships. If you can't have that partnership and that discussion with your buyer, with your, your customers, that's going to increase your cost too. And if you don't know what your main cost is, is it cost per pallet, cost per lane, cost per piece unit, like all of those things become really important to your point of the North Star, what is it? It can't just be cost, it should be cost of something. And then also makes the importance of growing within each retailer successfully. So don't just say, I'm going to do all 10 of these retailers at once. Do one grow in there, get them to a good point and then move on to the next. Because if you have 15 little ones that aren't following their minimums, it's going to be really, really hard to control any of that and make a plan to keep up with that North Star. [00:26:48] Speaker B: Well, and think about, you know, I know I'm pretty sure I've referenced this every podcast in the last 12 months. But like the tenure of the person in the seat making the decision right now has never seen this. And they probably because any clown with a phone could get freight moved on time, you know, for the last four years because there was so much, so much capacity out there that, you know, more than likely they've got a network of order takers and no one's telling them, hey, dude, your problem is not that, you know, eastern Pennsylvania is flush with freight. Your problem is that your shipper closes a two and your receiver is, doesn't open until 9pm and yeah, like that's your problem and you're, you know, you're fixing the wrong thing. [00:27:33] Speaker A: Yeah, it's, it's a massive challenge, but it's one that we developed a system. Andrew, how about that? Or, or a tool and that would be called canopy. [00:27:44] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:27:45] Speaker A: It's a little bit of a chicken or, or an egg type scenario, but because we developed that tool, we can help identify those trends. Right. So Teddy was just talking about some, some KPIs. To me, I think that's important. I, I'm reflecting on a, a current monthly review that we have with the current customer where we have trends from the last three years and we can actually show them. And because of that flexibility that you just referenced, like our, our trends aren't as, quote, unquote, bad as, as the market. [00:28:17] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:28:18] Speaker A: Says it is because we've developed carriers that run those lanes because we've developed a good rapport with the shipper, because we've identified that we can park overnight or there is a second shift or all of these things that we do for our customers almost on a daily basis. So what else do you think in terms of like zipline in this marketplace? I think you alluded to it already with, with transparency. But anything else from your founding. Was it 19 years ago? [00:28:51] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:28:52] Speaker A: That are still holding true today? [00:28:54] Speaker B: 20. It's just like every other look, every other business I touch. It's about value sets. And when you are serving us. The reason we chose to serve a specific niche wasn't because we were brilliant or appreciate or anything else. It was that we understood that we needed to pick a value set that we were going to run our business on. It made it easy for us as dumb founders that were young and just didn't really, you know, understand how to build anything else. But it really still is the way that, that, you know, we run this business. It's the way we, we find our, our, you know, fill our pipeline with people that we know are going to fit our value set. The people that come across that convert into new clients are almost always, especially in markets like this, people that actually, you know, meet our value set. And so, you know, for, for our clients or for our competitors, it's understanding what value set, what value are you delivering at the end of the day to your buyer and then, you know, run every single other aspect of your business through that lens and you know, look for every single client we have at the end of the day, your, your, your product moves off of shelf fulfillment and on time fulfillment. So that's the only thing you need to care about. And you know, good transparent partners can help you plan better, can help you understand what your network looks like. I mean, you and Teddy and the work that our team does with clients and helping them identify those opportunities that they have to save money or, or improve the value proposition money that they're spending is super impactful. And we see it in the, in the success of our clients. Right. They come in here and they grow. And I don't think that's a coincidence. [00:30:36] Speaker A: All right, we're going to Brass Tax. Give me your 2 minute prediction for, for Q3. Is it going to shift? Is it going to go down? [00:30:45] Speaker B: No, I think this continues. I don't, there's no reason why it wouldn't, especially not this quarter. I think, you know, there's, there's probably some level of truth to the market that'll come out in, in the fourth quarter right. When, when things typically start to, to soften up a little bit, you know, late fourth quarter. But I don't, I just don't see any reason why it would, it would slow now. I'm pretty sure I said I don't see any reason why it would pick up any more than it did in the second quarter. So, you know, what the hell do I know? But we haven't, we haven't seen a really big shift in demand dynamics. And you know, we're in a seasonal high demand time of year right now in part of the cycle. So it, it is natural for demand to be up against, you know, like I think that supply trends move in, in much longer terms than demand trends do. [00:31:41] Speaker A: Sure. [00:31:42] Speaker B: At least in the post Covid world. So, you know, I don't, I don't, I don't see demand trends shifting a ton outside of seasonality. So it, I, I mean, I, I'd love to say it's going to quiet down a little bit in the, in the back half of the fourth quarter. [00:31:59] Speaker A: Yeah, it's going to run hot. It's running hot, it's going to stay hot and that's okay. [00:32:05] Speaker B: And look, if, if interest rates change, sure. All bets are off and, and it's a, just back to start over. [00:32:13] Speaker A: There's going to be some relief in the fuel. Hopefully. It's interesting to see how small of a percentage that of that relief is. [00:32:20] Speaker B: Right. Like it's, that's never really been the driver. We've always, you know, I feel like it's one of those things that people are told to look at as a driver, but in real terms, I mean, look, you go back to the stat of like 96% of fleets are less than five trucks. Those guys don't know what's going on in the straight of Hormuz. They don't know what the weekly DOE was on Tuesday. Yeah, like they don't know that stuff. They don't care. They care. What does it cost me to run my truck from here to there? And how much money can I make on that against that cost? [00:32:51] Speaker A: It'll be interesting. We'll see you again here in a few months to talk about Q4. Andrew, as always, leave us a five star review on Spotify or Apple. Apple. If you've learned something new, you're going to check out our quarterly update by clicking on the link in the show notes for our blog. Andrew lynch, founder of Zipline, thank you for joining us as always. We will see you next time.